Cycling and transit act as access for each other, it’s not a one-way relationship

Cycling extends transit catchment distances to several miles, although not always in obvious ways. Travelers may use cycling to avoid a transfer, reach an interim destination not on transit, or other creative ways.

While the largest use case is taking a bike onto the transit vehicle, there are lots of use cases that depend on locking up the bike, and agencies can facilitate this combined mode by offering plentiful secure bike parking at key transit locations.

That last point is one we emphasized in the Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030 (I chaired the committee that worked on the bicycle/transit integration chapter).

About Chris Smith

Chris Smith, a citizen activist focused on transportation, neighborhoods and civic engagement, is the founder of PortlandTransport.com. He currently serves on the Portland Planning and Sustainability Commission and the board of Portland Streetcar Inc. His day job is as Site Architect for Xerox.com.

I understand that Portland is a pretty small city to have a transit tunnel. However, it’s long and narrow with only one high-capacity road connection between the east and west, and that road connection includes the downtown loop.

There is a SIGNIFICANT potential ridership from the east side where there’s lots of desirable transit accessible housing to and from the tech corridor out west, where there’s also lots of transit accessible employment.

However, because it takes twenty minutes to travel the two miles between the Rose Quarter TC and Goose Hollow (on a good day…..), not many people avail themselves of transit to make the trip.

With a tunnel allowing both better access to the south downtown area and cutting the running time for that segment of the trip about in half, trips which now avoid transit would choose it.

This makes sense, but it may be too idealistic for Portland. Here, many in the “bicycling community” seem to hold transit (particularly Streetcar) in active contempt, seeing it as competition for regional funding priorities, instead of as part of one holistic sustainable transportation network.

The bike and transit commute trip is something that will only grow in popularity as infrastructure is developed to support first mile/last mile commutes. This includes bike share, secure bike stations, workplace shower and locker facilities.